Savin juniper
Juniperus sabina
Family · Cupressaceae · Can kill
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The juniper mat that spreads across limestone mountain ridges and never rises from the ground. For centuries it was the abortifacient of the countryside, and it killed those who used it: it is among the most toxic plants in the Iberian flora.
Uplands · Scrubland
Also known assavin
How to tell it
A PROSTRATE shrub, spreading as a mat and rarely more than half a metre tall even when metres across. Scale leaves, very small and pressed to the twig, like a miniature cypress. Crushed between the fingers it gives off a strong, acrid, unpleasant smell, which is the most reliable mark in the field. A small dark blue cone with a bloom, hanging. The other junipers of the Peninsula are upright trees.
What it is confused with
Spanish juniper
Juniperus thurifera
It is an upright TREE with a single trunk, reaching twenty metres. A pleasant resinous smell when crushed, not acrid. It shares the same limestone ranges with the prostrate one.
What it is for
None, and there is no room for experiments. The oil contains sabinol and sabinyl acetate, corrosive to the digestive tract and toxic to liver and kidneys. The poisonings described in medical literature come almost all from home abortifacient use and several ended in death. It is not boiled, not infused, not tasted.
Where it occurs
Sources
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